In The News

Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco Wired, July 9, 2022 - Internal messages seen by WIRED show that nearly 60 vehicles were disabled across the city over a 90-minute period after they lost touch with a Cruise server. As many as 20 cars, some of them halted in crosswalks, created a jam in the city’s downtown

The Technology That Could Stop Speeders in Their Tracks CityLab, August 10, 2022 - The good news is that this death toll could be reduced remarkably easily. All that’s needed is the installation of a simple device known as a speed governor, which has been around for almost as long as the automobile itself. 

Kansas City’s Zero Fare Transit Program Shows Major Success – And What Still Needs to Be Done NextCity, July 27, 2022 - Kansas City, Missouri, made national headlines in the fall of 2019 when its city council voted unanimously to become America’s first large city to make public transportation free citywide. Now, two and a half years later, anyone living anywhere in the city can ride buses without paying a fare. Survey data shows the move has largely been successful in advancing local transit equity.

Being a Pedestrian in the U.S. Was Already Dangerous. It’s Getting Even Worse. Vox.com, 7/25/22 - Using information from the government’s database of fatal car crashes, researchers looked at all the pedestrian deaths recorded between 2001 and 2016. The idea was to identify hot spots: 1,000-meter segments of roadway where six or more pedestrians were killed over two eight-year periods.

This Small City Ditched Its Buses NPR, 7/19/22 - What if you could catch a ride on public transportation the same way you catch an Uber or Lyft? That's the promise of microtransit, where residents order public transportation from their phone, rather than wait at a bus stop. The city of Wilson, North Carolina took the dramatic step of replacing its bus system with on demand minivans about two years ago, and says it's been a game changer for residents.

How Transit Agencies Are Engaging the Transit Professionals of Tomorrow Next City, 7/15/22 - San Francisco Muni is among many agencies beginning to create intentional spaces for youth to recognize their experiences navigating transit. To ensure young transit riders felt safe sharing about their experiences using Muni and what needed to be improved, they created the Youth Transportation Advisory Board, composed of youth ages 14 to 19 who live or go to school in San Francisco,

Lonely Last Days in the Suburban Office Park New York Times, July 5, 2022 -  Today suburban office parks have drawn far less attention than downtown offices that are also threatened by remote work. But their decline reflects in some ways a more sweeping and permanent judgment — of once-dominant ideas about where Americans work, how the office should look, and what the suburbs should be.

Missing Middle Where Trains Used To Run Public Square, 7/6/22 - The U.S. has a wealth of abandoned rail lines. Many sections have been converted to walking and bicycling trails. Less often, planners use these corridors as an amenity that attracts compact housing or mixed-use development.

Walking and Biking to the Office May Be Good for New Yorkers. It’s Not So Great for the MTA.

The City, 7/5/22 - Changes in commuting habits are part of the new pandemic reality that has seen subway ridership stuck at 60% of the old normal, as a fiscal cliff looms for the transit agency.

USDOT Launches $1 Billion Program to Reconnect Neighborhoods Roads & Bridges, 7/1/22 - The U.S. Department of Transportation has opened the application process for grants from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act program that aims to restore neighborhood links to workplaces, schools, and other resources that had been severed by old highways, railways, and other infrastructure.